Product displays for use in retail environments are generally designed to display products in a manner such that they are easily accessible by a consumer. Conventional product displays must take advantage of as much horizontal and vertical space available so as to maximize the amount of product displayed. For example, retail displays for yogurt products must accommodate packages of varying dimensions while still maximizing available space.
Generally speaking, particular yogurt manufacturers or brands use uniform product sizing across their product lines, but packaging size and shape differs from one manufacturer to another. It is common for retailers to vertically stack a particular brands' product so that various flavors of a particular brand may be located near one another for the consumer's convenience. Unfortunately, due to the differences in packaging size and shape between the various manufacturers or brands, this often means that unnecessary gaps exist between some product and existing store shelving because the shelving units have to be spaced to accommodate more than one brand of product. These gaps occur vertically due to the various heights of the different brands of product and horizontally due to the various widths of the different brands of product. Although yogurt has been used as an example of where such problems occur, it should be understood that the same is true for many different product displays.
Existing configurations include displays containing bulky and/or expensive materials which reduce the overall product display area. These displays may also incorporate horizontal shelving units which further limit the product display area due to their size and lack of adjustability for products of different dimensions. Additionally, these existing configurations may not be effective at automatically facing the product to increase visual appeal to consumers or add significant expense in order to provide such automatic front-facing (e.g., costs associated with additional materials required, costs associated with reduced amount of product that can be display due to the size of the front-facing systems used, costs associated with time and level of skill it requires for display setup, etc.).
Thus, a low-cost, adjustable product display and related methods of manufacture and display are desired which can be incorporated into existing retail areas. Such a system may additionally provide for automatic product facing for ease of re-merchandising product.
Corresponding reference characters indicate corresponding components throughout the several views of the drawings. Skilled artisans will appreciate that elements in the figures are illustrated for simplicity and clarity and have not necessarily been drawn to scale. For example, the dimensions and/or relative positioning of some of the elements in the figures may be exaggerated relative to other elements to help to improve understanding of various embodiments of the present invention. Also, common but well-understood elements that are useful or necessary in a commercially feasible embodiment are often not depicted in order to facilitate a less obstructed view of these various embodiments. It will further be appreciated that certain actions and/or steps may be described or depicted in a particular order of occurrence while those skilled in the art will understand that such specificity with respect to sequence is not actually required. It will also be understood that the terms and expressions used herein have the ordinary technical meaning as is accorded to such terms and expressions by persons skilled in the technical field as set forth above except where different specific meanings have otherwise been set forth herein. In addition, it should be understood that items that are set forth in the singular cover embodiments that utilize either one or more of such items.